I pay the cab driver, pick up my suitcase, and step outside. The background's filled with the notes from Dean Martin's rendition of "Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow!", and as I walk away from the cab the sounds of the city drive away the memories from the war, back in Sicily. It's February 8, 1945, Empire Bay, and the war is drawing to a close. Welcome to Mafia II.

I am Italian and I can't see myself playing this game, knowing what I know about the real mafia.
Throughout the last 60 years the organized crime has spread and contaminated the whole country, since the americans first cut a deal with the families to control the territory and to exterminate different ideologies. This approach was followed by the italian state too, so that, nowadays, all top levels of the government are in one way or another entangled with the mafia.
The mafia has gotten different, more subtle, more global, more legal and political. Also much bigger, even if it does not seem so.
I hope that kids in my country are not alienated by games about such a subject and spend time considering the real phenomenon.

I fully understand where you're coming from, but the important message in this game is that the mafia isn't funny at all. The picture painted in the game is one of loss, death, prison - there's a sequence where you're actually asked to clean toilets with a small brush.

Again - I understand you, but I do want to note that Mafia 2 does NOT glorify the mob. Quite the opposite.